A historic gathering of over 50 African heads of state in Beijing reverberates in Zambia where the lives of three characters unfold. Mr Liu is one of thousands of Chinese entrepreneurs who have settled across the continent in search of new opportunities. He has just bought his fourth farm and business is booming.

In northern Zambia, Mr Li, a project manager for a multinational Chinese company is upgrading Zambia’s longest road. Pressure to complete the road on time intensifies when funds from the Zambian government start running out.

Meanwhile Zambia’s Trade Minister is on route to China to secure millions of dollars of investment.

Through the intimate portrayal of these characters, the expanding footprint of a rising global power is laid bare – pointing to a radically different future, not just for Africa, but also for the world.

An eye-opening documentary that puts into concrete images that truism of the geo-political commentariat: that China is a new economic superpower. Specifically, it illustrates a new type of colonialist exploitation in present-day Zambia, enthusiastically aided and abetted by the national government. On a micro level, it involves individual Chinese emigres buying large plots of scrub, and hiring locals to clear and farm the land. On the macro, giant Chinese corporations are handed contracts to improve infrastructure: we follow one such, building a highway more than 300km across the country. On the face of it, there’s an anti-western, post-imperial rhetoric fuelling the relationship, but fairly evidently it’s a grossly lopsided one, with considerable benefits to China in the form of plentiful and cheap natural resources. If this documentary is anything to go by, the Chinese incomers are just as suspicious and disrespectful to the Africans as their European forebears; you have to wonder how long it will take the Zambians to become aware of what they’ve let themselves in for